Dana Stabenow - A Taint in the Blood

“Bruce, is this action in response to the rumor that Victoria Muravieff has inoperable cancer?”

Bruce looked reproving. “I don’t know where you got that information, Mike, but certainly not. Jill?”

“Bruce, does the governor’s action have anything to do with the recent death of Charlotte’s daughter?”

Bruce looked grave. “The governor’s heart goes out to the Bannister family in their time of grief and mourning. Nothing can replace the life that was so randomly, so carelessly, and so criminally taken, but we want to reassure the Bannisters and the Muravieffs that the perpetrator of this most heinous act will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Yes, Andy?”

“Bruce, it’s well known that Erland Bannister, Victoria Muravieffs brother, was a big supporter of the governor’s candidacy and subsequent election. Did-”

Bruce look austere. “I know where you’re going with this, Andy, and I’m shocked that you would suggest for even a moment that this act was in the nature of a political debt paid. The governor made this decision on the merits of the case in question and on the character of the person named, nothing else. Yes, Sandy?”

The scene cut away to an interview with Erland Bannister, who answered the questions put to him with an appropriately somber (demonstrating his grief at the death of his niece) but quietly joyous (demonstrating his happiness at the release of his sister) face. He was delighted that the state finally had a governor who could show mercy where it was due. Victoria had done extraordinary work during her incarceration, and Erland thought that even the judge who had sentenced her to life without parole would have agreed with the governor’s action today. Victoria had already been released and was lodged with family members, exactly where, the reporter would understand, Erland was disinclined to say.

Next up was the chief of police, who was prepared to accede that some recognition must be given to those felons convicted of even the most heinous crimes for their attempts to redeem themselves, and that on the whole the APD was behind the governor’s decision.

“Back to you, John,” said the reporter, and the screen went to a commercial. Jim clicked off the remote and looked at Kate.

“The governor’s been in office for almost a year,” she said. “Why wait until now to commute her sentence?”

“Why indeed?” Jim said.

“Unless, of course,” Kate said, gathering steam, “it had something to do not with the merits of her case but with her daughter’s hiring a private investigator to take a new look at the case?”

“What are you thinking now?”

“I’m thinking,” Kate said grimly, “that Victoria didn’t set that fire. I’m thinking someone else did. I’m thinking they’re still around. I’m thinking if Erland didn’t do it himself, he knows who did, and I’m thinking he’s determined I won’t find out.”

“I’m thinking he’s wrong,” Jim said. “But then that’s just me.”

“There’s always a third possibility,” Max said.

He sounded grumpy, but that might have been because Kate had gotten him out of bed. They sat alone in the cafeteria at the Pioneer Home, both of them hunched over mugs of coffee.

“What third?” Kate said, sounding a little cranky herself. “I’ve got too much information going on here as it is.”

“What if Charlotte did it herself?”

Kate stared at him for so long, he began to get a little nervous. “You’re not going to cry or anything, are you?”

“Why,” Kate said finally, almost despairing, “why on earth would you think that Charlotte had set the fire that killed her brother? And why oh why would she ever have hired me to find her out?”

“Maybe she wanted to use you as her confessor,” Max said. “It happens.”

Kate knew that. It didn’t make her any happier to hear Max say it.

“Or maybe she really did want her mom out of the clink, and she figured it had been so long that even if you did find out enough to get her mom out, you’d never find out who really committed the crime.”

“My head hurts,” Kate said. “And I want to go home.” “Don’t blame you,” Max said. “So do I, and I don’t even have one.”

Gloom settled in over the table.

She could go home, she thought, sitting in the Subaru in the street outside. Victoria was out of jail, even if Charlotte was dead. Kurt had regained consciousness, and although he remembered little of the events leading up to the shooting and nothing at all about getting shot, the doctor, whom she’d spoken to earlier, had assured Kate that in traumas such as these, the memory often did return a little at a time. They would have to be patient.

Everyone wanted her to go home, Jim, Brendan, even Max had told her to pack it in. Mutt put her cold nose on Kate’s cheek and gave an imploring whine. Nobody wanted her to stay in Anchorage.

But she couldn’t let it go. She knew someone was running a scam on her, she knew she hadn’t come anywhere near the truth, and she knew that if they had their way, she never would. It was, she thought, resting her forehead on the steering wheel, a combination of things-a need to know the truth that would not be denied, and a fierce disinclination to lose.

So, wearily, because she hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep the night before, Kate went back to the town house to lay in supplies, and trundled back up the hillside to park inside a stand of alder down the road from Charlotte and Emily’s house. It was a little after 8:30 in the morning. After two hours, she’d finished Last Standing Woman by Winona LaDuke and a bottle of water, watched a moose cow with two leggy calves graze on alder bark off her right front bumper, eaten a chicken sandwich, watched three magpies chase off the moose, peed in the bushes, read a quarter of Lamb by Christopher Moore, and seen a big brown dog trailing a leash come kiyüng out of the underbrush with a small but irritated black bear close on his trail.

“Stay,” Kate said.

Mutt, who had long since abandoned the Subaru for the shade it cast, yawned wide enough for Kate to hear it from Mutt’s sprawled position beneath the car, just like she’d never given any thought to adding a new parameter to that chase.

The sun beat down on the roof of the Subaru. Kate had all the windows open, but she was still sweating into the driver’s seat. In the distance, the sounds muffled by trees, mothers would call to children, men would call for dogs, car doors would slam and engines would start. Kate would peer hopefully through the foliage, only to sink back disappointed when whoever it was left from the wrong house.

At 2:30 in the afternoon, a gold two-door Eldorado came almost silently up the road and turned into Charlotte’s driveway. Kate got out of the Subaru and slipped through the trees to the edge of the clearing surrounding the house. Fifteen minutes later, Erland opened the door of the Cadillac for Emily. The Cadillac purred down the driveway and vanished.

Kate didn’t wait. “Mutt,” she said, and Mutt emerged from out of the bushes. “Guard,” Kate said, and headed for the house. The front door was locked. So was the back door. A sliding glass door that opened from the master bedroom onto the upstairs deck was not, and Kate, proud that she was barely breathing hard from the climb up the crossbars, stepped inside.

The bedroom held a king-size bed with a matching suite of furniture, including a vanity and a dresser. Kate rifled through all the drawers and then the closet without discovering anything more exciting than a cutout bra that looked like it would be awfully uncomfortable. The master bath was cluttered with various oils, ointments, creams, lotions, and every brand of makeup Kate had ever seen advertised in a magazine.